Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell has praised his players after Sunday afternoon's significant day for the club at the MCG. 

Prior to the first bounce, Hawthorn’s centenary celebrations came to life with a special pre-game ceremony featuring four-time All Australian Shane Crawford as well as an address to the past and current players by Mitchell himself. 

The Hawks then faced Richmond and handled the occasion brilliantly, defeating the Tigers by 65 points - their biggest winning margin in 2025. 

Adding to the momentous occasion was much-loved forward Jack Gunston kicking his 500th career goal, which Mitchell eluded to in his post-match press conference. 

The Hawks coach also highlighted the efforts of some of the team’s inclusions as well as some defensive efforts throughout the day. 

We summarised the key points from Mitchell’s press conference below. 

On the 100-year occasion 

“It was a bit scrappy early. I was really pleased that the players were able to continue in the right attitude and I really thought they handled the occasion well. This was a big occasion for the club. To see the people that were there was quite daunting to be honest, for all of us. Then, to go straight from this huge emotional understanding of the 100 years and the weight that it carried, to then go and play 10 minutes later, I thought they did a great job. I found it quite difficult on a personal level to get back to it, and for them to physically have to do that as well, I thought we handled the event really well, and I’m really proud of the boys.” 

On Jack Gunston’s milestone 

“You see how good he is, when every draft, (the player profiles read) ‘who does he play like? Jack Gunston’. And I’m like, ‘if it’s not Jack Gunston, who is it’? There’s only a handful of players who can play the role he does across a generation. You look at how many players his height and build who have kicked a lot of goals and have that position in a team … it’s not a usual position that he plays, and I think he’s really created something in the game. At the next version of whatever today was, he’ll fit quite comfortably in the group that was here today.” 

On Finn Maginness and Changkuoth Jiath’s inclusions 

“I don’t think we have any doubt that they’re both AFL standard, so I’m not surprised that they played well. Selection will continue to be a challenge for us to make sure we keep our best players out there to give ourselves a chance to win every game that we can. I was really pleased that CJ got on the end of a lot of footy today and Finn’s regularly a much better player than his statistics suggest, and that creates a lot of run and outnumbers. Their running power today was really important for the win.”

On Tom Barrass, Josh Battle and Josh Weddle’s defensive efforts 

“I think we gave up a lot of front-half turnovers in the first part of the game, but I was enormously thankful for Tom Barrass to be fair. He stood up enormously well. There were a lot of really big key packs where he was able to either mark it, which was obviously the best case scenario, or just really clear the area. I was enormously thankful that he was back there. Then as the game went on, I thought Josh Battle really came into his own, he and Josh Weddle, I thought, together, just their running power and their one-on-one game was fantastic. It was a day when we probably held up because of some of the things that we thought could trouble us at different stages, which were consistent, back-to-back deep entries. Today, we saw some evidence that we’ve recruited in a way that doesn’t always work, it’s not the way we like to play, but we are protected a little bit more by fantastic efforts from players whose weapons are built around that type of entry from the opposition.”

Watch Mitchell's post-math press conference below.